The Chitta economy: How the business of drugs works in Punjab

NEW DELHI: A video from Punjab which became viral in June showed a newly married woman—wedding bangles (chooda) on her wrists—taking drugs. She put a lighted candle below a foil and snorted what was thought to be chitta—Punjab's notorious synthetic drug made from heroin and other substances. The video indicates that Punjab's drug problem is not restricted to the typical demographic of unemployed youth. It is rampant across divides such as class, gender, age and geography. No wonder, the Punjab government recently ordered all its employees to undergo drug tests. A crackdown on drugs by the state government after Capt Amarinder Singh came to power last year has led to arrests of a large number of peddlers and choked supply routes. Yet there is no end to the problem. In June this year, dozens of drug-related deaths were reported in the state.

In the last few years, while the business and economy in the state kept sliding, the drugs trade flourished. With addicts turning peddlers and several reports of political patronage to the drugs trade, chitta became a veritable business in Punjab. The business of drugs sprawls from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the farms of rural Punjab and drawing rooms of Ludhiana and Chandigarh, involving a vast variety of actors such as the unemployed rural youth, urban rich brats, spoilt college girls, bored housewives and even cops.

The factories

Traditionally, drugs in Punjab come from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, cultivated under the patronage of Taliban for whom it is a big source of easy money. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the total area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was estimated at 328,000 hectares in 2017, a 63% increase over the previous year. Potential opium production was estimated at 9,000 tons in 2017, an increase of 87% from 2016. A spike in production in Afghanistan obviously means supply to Punjab will not slacken even despite the crackdown on dealers and peddlers by the state government. There are reports of drugs reaching Punjab through alternative routes now, one so circuitous that it first reaches Africa and then comes to Delhi and Punjab. This route is worked by African smugglers who have bases in Delhi. Afghanistan, however, is not the only source of drugs in Punjab. Spurious and cheap drugs are also manufactured locally, many times in the garb of pharmaceutical factories.

The gate price

The Pakistan border has been the main entry point of drugs into Punjab. According to Commandant R K Arora, a serving officer with the Border Security Force (BSF) and a professor at the Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, the origin of the drugs lies in Afghanistan which is the world's largest producer of heroin. From there the drugs reach Pakistan and enter India through the Indo-Pak border. A kilogram smuggled from across the border is valued nearly Rs 5 crore in the international market. "The price in Afghanistan is pretty less. When it enters Pakistan, it costs somewhere between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh. Once the drug enters India, the cost shoots up 10 to 15 times to around 20- 25 lakh,” he says.
The distribution network

Meandering rivers and streams along Indo-Pak border are popular routes for smugglers because they are not easy to track for Indian forces. Some use innovative ways such as sliding in drugs in plastic pipes through the barbed wire at the international border. Smugglers are well connected to the couriers on the Indian side and work in coordination to escape the scrutiny of security forces. "They work at different levels. Once the package is received on the Indian side, the courier will wait for further instructions from the handler who might change the location even at the last minute based on his inputs about presence of check-posts set up by security agencies," says Arora of BSF.

After reaching the nearest border village, the drugs are packed in small packets containing a gram of chitta each. These small packets are sold to customers by local peddlers. A large chunk of these, however, is moved towards big cities like Amritsar and Ludhiana. Smugglers use migrant labourers, poor farmers and addicts to transport drugs from the border areas to the cities.

According to sources, the most efficient peddlers of drugs are drug addicts themselves. A drug addict is the last man in the distribution network and also the most motivated because he takes to peddling drugs to earn his own fix. Since these addicts are in the business not just for money but for their fix too, they can be quite reliable when it comes to peddling drugs in big cities where police keeps a close eye.

According to police sources, chitta costs an addict not less than Rs 2,000 a day, making it an expensive habit. After begging, borrowing and stealing, when an addict can no longer buy his fix, the dealer has a deal for him—sell 10 and get one. Akin to multi-level marketing, the strategy helps dealers not only retain customers but also add new ones rapidly.

Even the policemen could be part of the distribution network. According to a
report, more than 100 Punjab Police personnel have been arrested for smuggling drugs or abetting the trade since 2014. Of these, nearly 30 have been arrested in the 15 months of the Congress government that came to power last year in March.

The distribution networks could be patronised by not only rogue police personnel but also influential politicians. Time and again, many politicians have been accused of patronising the drug trade.
"Many people have a stake in the drug trade since it generates high profits, and may also serve political interests. It is plausible that entities in Pakistan facilitate the movement of drugs into Indian Punjab as part of a political strategy. Some domestic sections of the law enforcement become active participants as well for monetary reasons," says Nirvikar singh, who teaches economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the US and writes on the Punjab affairs. He believes that many people in Punjab with no economic opportunities become drug dealers.

The price

The price of drugs increases with the risk of getting caught. According to sources, one gram of heroin costs more than Rs 2,500 in border areas. As the distance from the border increases, the price shoots up. “In borders areas like Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Fazilka, the price used to be around Rs 2,500 per gram till 2016. Now the price there could easily be more than Rs 5,000. In cities like Ludhiana and Chandigarh, the price is not less than Rs 8,000 for a gram of heroin,” says a young businessman from Ludhiana who used to be a drug addict. "The prices are higher now due to the crackdown by the government. But still there is no shortage of supply. The risk factor has just taken the prices a few notches up,” he says.

The marketing machine

A well-oiled marketing machine works behind the drug trade in state. It is the Punjabi music industry. Punjabi songs have glorified and glamourised drugs for years. Drug songs sell as much as love songs. The movie 'Udta Punjab' threw ample light on how Punjabi music is one vast advertisement for drugs. The music industry has vitiated the popular culture so much that a few months ago the state government had to form a panel, a 'culture commission', to monitor songs that glorify drugs and violence.

The consumer base

Addicts in Punjab are no longer just the typical unemployed youth or poor indebted farmers. The vast consumer base includes cops, housewives, professionals, businessmen as well as rich and bored youths. Drug dealers cater to a diverse range of customers, right from poor people in the villages to rich and educated city dwellers.

According to the Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey, which was conducted in 2015 in 10 districts in the state by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, the estimated size of opioid-dependent population in Punjab is 2,32,856. The most common opioid drug used by this group is chitta or heroin (reported by 53%), followed by opium and its byproducts (reported by 33%). Acording to a 2017 report, ‘Epidemiology of substance use and dependence in the state of Punjab’, by Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, there are 78,000 injectable opioid users in the state. Of these, heroin or chitta users account for 61.6%, making it the most common drug. According to a research conducted in 15 villages of Jalandhar District last year and published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, every third person in Punjab is hooked to drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.

The data on drug use in Punjab is patchy. Most studies and surveys are based on small samples. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is now conducting a national-level survey in collaboration with National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, AIIMS, New Delhi, to provide absolute numbers.

Yet, the number indicated by sample surveys is so vast that there can be no surprise about drugs being a lucrative business in the state. "Drug use in Punjab is not restricted to the poor and farmers. The general problem in my opinion is lack of economic opportunities for young men that they perceive as consistent with their social status. They have enough money for "discretionary" consumption, however, and drugs and alcohol provide psychological escape routes. Of course, once someone is addicted, the consumption of drugs and/or alcohol is no longer strictly discretionary,” says Nirvikar Singh.